tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20625065129178176262024-03-16T02:19:19.394-07:00C-Change Media Inc.A digital media company created to launch new online platforms in niche business areas. C-Change, based in the San Francisco Bay area, was founded by former BusinessWeek executive editor John A. Byrne.John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-47443017315736377742012-12-06T10:28:00.002-08:002012-12-06T10:46:25.878-08:00It's All About Who You Hire, How They Lead...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm8XPfMICrAfKUTphArghgVAVGEdL5yjDKYvADKgjl0BE4ypCoQdPQfIdEbIi2vanKo9f06tgxZ0BqyuSJDYzQR-MAqu8xt3nxkoifV9dZBIzPaaVtbyWOTvgAhaf5jQcxqMCSwfCkvog/s1600/1118379888-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm8XPfMICrAfKUTphArghgVAVGEdL5yjDKYvADKgjl0BE4ypCoQdPQfIdEbIi2vanKo9f06tgxZ0BqyuSJDYzQR-MAqu8xt3nxkoifV9dZBIzPaaVtbyWOTvgAhaf5jQcxqMCSwfCkvog/s320/1118379888-1.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;"> Another year, another book? It certainly seems that way. This week, Jossey-Bass published by latest as part of its prestigious Warren Bennis series: my collaboration with Mort Mandel called <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lead-Essential-Advice-Self-Made-Leader/dp/1118379888/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354818141&sr=1-1&keywords=Mort+Mandel">It's All About Who You Hire, How They Lead...and Other Essential Advice from a Self-Made Leader</a>.</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;"> Now leadership books are a dime a dozen, but this one is special--and not because I was involved in its creation.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;"> Over the course of
a long career in journalism, I’ve met and interviewed many of this generation’s
greatest corporate leaders: Jack Welch, Andy Grove, John Chambers, A.G. Lafley,
and Jeff Immelt, among countless others. Then, one day out of the blue, I
received a telephone call from a friend who asked me if I had ever heard of
Mort Mandel. I had to confess, I hadn’t. But the phone call led to a meeting
and then to numerous interviews and the book that came out this week.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;"> Management sage
Peter Drucker once put Mort in the company of Andy Grove and Jack Welch. I
think he did Mort an injustice. Unlike a Jack Welch, an Andy Grove, or a Lee
Iaccoca, whose corporate achievements define their public personas, Mort has
lived in two worlds all of his years: the world of profit and the world of
social impact. Even as the chairman and CEO of a New York Stock Exchange
Company for 34 years, he was spending as much as a third of his time in the
social sector. Mort strongly believes that his experience in the social sector
made him a better corporate executive, just as he is convinced that what he
learned in business made him a more effective social capitalist.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;"> It’s important to
note that Mort isn’t an executive who lends his name to the board of a
non-profit and shows up occasionally for a meeting or two. Rather, he has been
a true social entrepreneur, with his time and his money, founding, either alone
or with others, more than a dozen non-profit organizations, mostly serving the
general community. They’ve worked to improve the quality of professional
leadership in the social sector, to rehabilitate the inner cities, and to
revitalize Jewish education around the world.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;"> What makes Mort
unusual, if not unique, is his selflessness in pursuing a life of purpose. From
his earliest days, he understood that there was much more to a successful life
than building wealth—though as a self-made billionaire his is a quintessential
rags-to-riches story. Mort understood that a life without meaning, purpose and
commitment isn’t a life at all. So he devoted a large share of his time to
combat human misery by bringing leadership to social causes.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;"> As a writer,
helping Mort tell his remarkable story, it would have been easy for me to lapse
into a modern-day version of Horatio Alger. After a childhood spent in the most
humble of circumstances, Mort and his two older brothers scraped together $900
in 1940 and went into business as a distributor of auto parts. From a Cleveland
storefront on Euclid Avenue, the brothers build Premier Industrial Corp. into a
national company that by 1960 went public and in 1964 was listed on the New
York Stock Exchange. For 34 out of 36 years, under Mort’s leadership as CEO, and
making all major decisions jointly with his brothers, Jack and Joe, Premier
reported record earnings and became extremely profitable, selling what many would
consider fairly humdrum products—nuts and bolts, circuit breakers, chemicals,
lubricating oil, and fire-fighting equipment.</span></div>
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A hundred dollars
invested in Premier stock in 1960, when Mort led the company’s public offering,
had grown in value to $23,200 by 1996, when Premier merged with British-based
Farnell Electronics in a $3 billion deal. That comes out to a 232-times return,
even without accounting for the reinvestment of some $417 million in dividends
the company paid to shareholders during that period.<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
Shareholders
weren’t the only beneficiaries. When the company was merged, some 56 employees became
millionaires. Again, this extraordinary performance came not from a Silicon
Valley highflyer or a brand name corporate player in New York, but rather from a
lesser-known, somewhat under-the-radar company in Cleveland, Ohio, led by a man
who was first an innovative entrepreneur and then a remarkably humble institution
builder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Since the sale,
Mort and his brothers have built a highly successful private trust company,
Parkwood Corp., to manage his family’s wealth and created a private equity firm
in Israel that owns and runs two fascinating businesses, and has devoted much
of his time to philanthropic efforts that, among other things, have nurtured a
new generation of social leaders in Israel and have lent sorely needed support
for the humanities in both the U.S. and Israel. That latter commitment—backed
by an investment of some $50 million in funding by Mort and his brothers--comes
from his strongly held belief that a civil and engaged society must learn the
wisdom of its forefathers, the philosophers, historians and writers whose
knowledge and experience all of us can benefit from.</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
Telling Mort’s
story—and sharing with readers the powerful ideas that led to this
success—would ordinarily be enough. But it wouldn’t do Mort’s journey or his
beliefs justice. As a result, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s All
About Who</i> is not your typical CEO biography nor is it yet another
management book to add to a sagging bookshelf loaded with advice and counsel
from the likes of Drucker, Tom Peters, and Jim Collins. Instead, it is the
story of a man and the ideas that have allowed him to craft a life of
significance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
For all of his
corporate accomplishments, Mort’s greatest source of pride is in the social
sector. One example is the recruiting and training of a social army of 450
outstanding leaders who are transforming K-12 education in Israel, building
schools in which Arabs and Israelis sit side-by-side as classmates, and also bringing
together religious and secular students in the same schools. No less crucial,
he has helped to shape the lives of more than a million Jews by devoting
extraordinary time and money to strengthen the leadership and the effective use
of Jewish Community Centers around the world. </div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
What Mort learned
about management and leadership as a hands-on volunteer leader and philanthropist
has been as profound as what he learned building a highly successful growth
company. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He believes that running
the United Way or IBM is almost exactly the same, except in the measurement of
outcomes. IBM generates profit. United Way touches and improves lives. What
they share in common to get those results is great leadership, disciplined
execution, and a rich culture built on respect, fairness, decency, and
integrity.</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
Mort strongly
believes that the single biggest problem with non-profits is that too many social
sector leaders spend too much time thinking about their cause--and not enough
time devoted to the management issues that will build the kind of institution
that will ultimately be most helpful to the people they are trying to serve.
The real waste, then, is the lives they could have touched and impacted but
didn’t.</div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
Respect for the
individual, superior customer service, and the pursuit of excellence are core
values that can deliver as much impact in the social world as in the corporate
world. These ideas work in all settings. These guiding principles apply to all
firms that serve people, whether they are universities, hospitals, charitable
organizations, or multi-national corporations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are the essence of great leadership—and the basis of
Mort’s belief that a single individual has the power to change the world.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
My favorite story
is one that Mort is too humble to put in this book. It involves the only time
one of his businesses suffered a work stoppage. Over a four-day period, in the
dead of a winter in the mid-1990s, strikers picketed outside the plant in
Wooster, Ohio. Mort saw to it that the company took a pickup truck, filled it
with sandwiches and Thermos bottles full of hot coffee and tea, and made sure
that the employees striking against him were well fed on the picket line. Mort
considered those employees members of his extended family. Some of them had
worked for Premier for 25 years. Sons followed fathers in that plant. “Why
wouldn’t we treat them well?” asks Mort. Why, indeed.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
With his hands, his
mind, and his money, Mort Mandel has created a life of meaning. As a result, he
has much to teach all of us—MBA candidates, entrepreneurs, managers and
executives of companies, hospitals, schools, and non-profit enterprises. What
does it take to start and build an enduring great company from the ground up?
What does it take to transform a social enterprise into a highly performing
organization that touches the lives of people around the world? What does it
take to live a life you can be proud of? The answers to these questions can be
found in the lessons Mort can teach us.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Most remarkable,
perhaps, is that even at the age of 91, Mort not merely welcomes the future but
believes that he still has a hand in shaping that future, of lighting a few
candles in an often dark world sorely in need of light. You’ll be better for
knowing him.</div>
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<!--EndFragment-->John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com448tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-48997426975433487962011-07-09T10:57:00.000-07:002011-07-09T10:57:06.148-07:00The Joy of Creating Something On Your OwnI'm fast approaching the one-year anniversary of the launch of PoetsandQuants.com, the first of two websites created by my own company, C-Change Media Inc. And one of the more gratifying aspects of doing something on your own is seeing the response from people all over the world to your work. The web is a great place to measure your impact because there are a wealth of statistics that tell you in real-time exactly how you're doing.<br />
<br />
With the one-year anniversary just a month away, we're fast approaching the five-million-visitor mark for our first site. But the most fascinating part of all this is seeing who is coming to PoetsandQuants for our coverage of graduate business school education and the MBA world.<br />
<br />
Here are the top ten cities in the world and the percentage of our total uniques from each location:<br />
<br />
1) New York 7.7%<br />
2) Chicago 2.9%<br />
3) Washington, D.C. 2.0%<br />
4) Bangalore, India 1.9%<br />
5) San Francisco 1.7%<br />
6) Boston 1.7%<br />
7) Los Angeles 1.6%<br />
8) Mumbai, India 1.4%<br />
9) London, U.K. 1.3%<br />
10) Singapore 1.2%<br />
<br />
It's humbling for me to see that four of the top ten cities drawing traffic to my site are outside the U.S.: Bangalore and Mumbai in India, London, and Singapore.<br />
<br />
Equally interesting to me is the demographic data which is truly impressive. It shows we're drawing a highly affluent, well-educated audience:<br />
<br />
49% of the site's visitors earn more than $100,000 a year (that is 176% of the Internet average)<br />
26% earn between $60,000 and $100,000 a year (that is 91% of the Internet average)<br />
46% already have an undergraduate degree (that is 112% of the Internet average)<br />
31% already have a graduate degree of one kind or another (that is 214% of the Internet average)<br />
58% of the site's visitors are male (that is 118% of the Internet average)<br />
42% are female (82% of the Internet average but much better than the average percentage of female MBAs)<br />
<br />
Last week, I had an SEO consultant take a look at the site's underlying performance. His verdict: On a scale of 1-to-100, PoetsandQuants.com got a grade of 99, meaning that of 3.6 million measured sites, it came in among the top 24,000 websites in the world. Not bad for a site that creates high-quality editorial for a rather small subset of the world's population.John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com533tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-17406876764936592502011-03-01T21:05:00.000-08:002011-03-02T08:28:02.163-08:00Why Saudi Arabia Is Blocking My Website From Its CitizensOnly a few days ago, I heard from a friend who had traveled to Saudi Arabia on business. From his hotel, he tried to access our first website, <a href="http://PoetsandQuants.com/">PoetsandQuants.com</a>, and couldn't get through. It was blocked by the government. I was as surprised as anyone by the news. After all, the site isn't commenting or encouraging any of the uprising across the Arab/Muslim world. It isn't a public policy or political site. It doesn't voice Democratic ideals, freedom of speech, or any other rights, privileges or responsibilities we all take for granted in the U.S.<br />
<br />
The site is about graduate business education, for goodness sake. The stories are on business schools, MBA programs, students, faculty, and corporate recruiters. The articles can be probing, but mostly on the value of an MBA degree, the increasingly higher cost of getting one, and the quality of the institutions that grant the degree. So why in the world would Saudi Arabia, or probably more likely some low-level censor in that country, want to block <a href="http://PoetsandQuants.com/">PoetsandQuants.com</a> from Saudi citizens.<br />
<br />
And then I remembered a rather brief article we ran under the headline: <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/2010/10/14/from-saudi-arabia-to-wharton/">"My Story: From Saudi Arabia to Wharton</a>." Published last October, it's the first-person narrative of a young woman and her remarkable journey to the U.S. to pursue a world-class MBA. It tells the story of Shereen Tawfiq, the first ever female student from Saudi Arabia at Wharton, who courageously challenged centuries old cultural values rooted in male dominance.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5HLCgbJ990CmRmtSO0Po6uO7rthu6Y8XuhiRwafJmgcF-11ZdKl2rTL0hyphenhyphen4MyqhjipsyDKTqnwASrZEf-1FKpRiXC-zGHKxIzRlWfrXOWRqtA6cKnx48WegB4Lix5WfILD7m4qpSbmXU/s1600/Picture+3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5HLCgbJ990CmRmtSO0Po6uO7rthu6Y8XuhiRwafJmgcF-11ZdKl2rTL0hyphenhyphen4MyqhjipsyDKTqnwASrZEf-1FKpRiXC-zGHKxIzRlWfrXOWRqtA6cKnx48WegB4Lix5WfILD7m4qpSbmXU/s640/Picture+3.png" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<br />
After graduating with an English Literature degree from a Saudi university, Tawfiq wanted to, in her words, "do something challenging that could have an impact on life. But women employment was limited. The only options were found in women-only environments such as teachers at girls-only schools or tellers or customer service representatives at women-only retail branches of local banks."<br />
<br />
Tawfiq got lucky. The Saudi government began imposing quotas to increase Saudi employment at large institutions. A bank in Jeddah hired her to replace a poorly paid expat. She began an administrative job, worked hard and tried to get a better position as a credit analyst. But Tawfiq was rejected many times.<br />
<br />
As she told us, "the bank's management didn't say it was because I was a woman, but I think society just wasn't ready. I kept pushing and, at last, eight months later, I got the job. My manager congratulated me, yet he candidly told me not to look for any promotions. The business community wasn't ready to accept women and business owners may have felt uncomfortable dealing with them directly. 'I'm not willing to jeopardize the bank's reputation,' my manager said."<br />
<br />
All in all, it's the story of a woman who relentlessly worked to get ahead--and in fact managed to break through several barriers. It's an inspiring tale. And I suppose that's why Saudi Arabia has blocked my site: So other women in Saudi Arabia won't be inspired to rise above the prejudice and the traditions that have kept so many intelligent and thoughtful women down.John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com462tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-89532515738381201442011-03-01T16:48:00.000-08:002011-03-01T16:54:24.651-08:00Introducing Poets&Quants for Executives<div><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNwf1-K8TOpuXI92h3OryxXV7QVRdPadw-ro-sv5jujwVmfAbqWAYI7NMynlY52wz2rFEjbhpKkKCNIa5PdqXPWo7y8gIkm141xD4tTKgSDK2ZmbxlcAmsqEu7PQsPJ7X-BC4JPfDiKoE/s1600/Picture+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNwf1-K8TOpuXI92h3OryxXV7QVRdPadw-ro-sv5jujwVmfAbqWAYI7NMynlY52wz2rFEjbhpKkKCNIa5PdqXPWo7y8gIkm141xD4tTKgSDK2ZmbxlcAmsqEu7PQsPJ7X-BC4JPfDiKoE/s400/Picture+1.png" width="400" /></a></div><div><br />
</div><div>Today was a big day for C-Change Media and yours truly. We finally launched our second website in the network. It was not "Slingshots for David," our upcoming site for disruptive entrepreneurs, as had been planned, but rather an extension of <a href="http://PoetsandQuants.com/">PoetsandQuants.com</a>. The truth is, PoetsandQuants has been such an outstanding success that it made more sense to build on the site's strengths and cover an adjacent and important market: education and training for executives. Thus was born <a href="http://PoetsandQuantsforExecs.com/">PoetsandQuantsforExecs.com</a> (above), what we hope will become a go-to place for managers and executives in search of personal growth in the form of an advanced business degree or a thoughtful non-degree course. </div><div><br />
</div><div>We debuted the new site with more than 50 stories and profiles, including a new composite ranking of the 50 Best Executive MBA programs in North America and plenty of people stories on how these executive students are balancing their work and home lives with the demands of getting an MBA from a top B-school. Our features will literally bring you around the world: we profile executives in Shanghai, Dubai and Norway who are enrolled in tough EMBA programs. We write about outstanding schools and unusual partnerships among them in Spain (IE Business School and Brown), London, and China. </div><div><br />
</div><div>We found an extraordinarily diverse group of fascinating people pursuing the degree: a former opera singer at Columbia Business School, the mayor of Oklahoma City at NYU's Stern School of Business, an eye surgeon at Chicago's Booth, and a brain surgeon at Duke's Fuqua School of Business. And then there is the Microsoft executive who broke a cardinal rule for EMBAs: don't change much in your personal or professional life at the start of a rigorous EMBA program. She broke that rule twice, first by taking a more demanding job at Microsoft and then getting pregnant.</div><div><br />
</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-style: normal; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">And just as we did at <a href="http://PoetsandQuants.com/">PoetsandQuants.com</a>, the site is filled with analysis on the rankings and the value of the executive version of the MBA. We tear apart all the major rankings, examining each of their strengths and flaws. Embarrassingly, we found that U.S. News currently ranks Stanford as having a top-rated EMBA program. Oops. Too bad Stanford doesn't have an EMBA program. As always, our goal is to surprise and delight you with the stories we cover--but most importantly to inform in a way that helps you make an important decision in your professional life.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-style: normal; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: small; font-style: normal; line-height: normal;">We hope you like the new site. Same look and feel (see below our first site). Different content for a different audience.</span></span><br />
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</span></div>John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com454tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-73173535269035335182011-02-26T09:44:00.000-08:002011-02-26T09:44:58.216-08:00What Really Is Hurting Google: Social SearchGoogle's latest decision to change its secret algorithms to reduce the rankings of trashy websites is a long overdue and important step to improve the company's core product: search. But the bigger problem with Google is not how spammers and low-quality web publishers have figured out how to game Google's search results, something I wrote about in August of last year in "<a href="http://www.c-changemedia.com/2010/08/why-google-is-doomed.html">Google? Where Are You</a>?" and "<a href="http://www.c-changemedia.com/2010/08/bing-vs-google-guess-who-wins.html">Bing vs. Google: Guess Who Wins?</a>"<br />
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What has really eroded the company's dominance in search is good, old fashioned competition from new innovative rivals.<br />
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Social search, in the form of Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Business Exchange, etc., has significantly and steadily diminished the relevance, value and usefulness of Google search results. All of these web enterprises have used social curation as the killer algorithm to make Google search less competitive. What your offline and online friends recommend to you is far more valuable than what an impersonal, mathematical equation spits out. This remarkable development isn't only important to users of search; it's a highly valuable insight to anyone in the high-quality content game.<br />
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My own experience with a now six-month-old website, <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/">PoetsandQuants</a>, clearly demonstrates the power and the superiority of social search over Google's gamed algorithm approach. As readers of this blog already know, PoetsandQuants is devoted to the coverage of graduate business education. The stories on the site are substantive and thoughtful. They tackle all the meaningful issues confronting this business, from the impact of globalization to the value of an MBA. They provide highly useful and relevant information to help people make an important decision, requiring an investment of more than a quarter of a million dollars, in their professional lives.<br />
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So what does six months of traffic data at <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/">PoetsandQuants</a> tell me about Google? The results are not merely shocking--they are nothing less than an indictment of Google's effectiveness in search, clear proof that Google is living off its earlier laurels that allowed it to become the world's preeminent search engine.<br />
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* <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Poets-Quants/117025308342232">Facebook</a>, with fewer than 500 active monthly users on our P&Q page, has referred 12 times the number of visitors to PoetsandQuants than Google in the past six months and is gaining more ground--not less--as a key referrer in the past two months.<br />
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* <a href="http://twitter.com/PoetsAndQuants">Twitter</a>, with 2,000 followers on the P&Q feed, has referred nearly 10 times the number of visitors to PoetsandQuants than Google over the same period.<br />
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* <a href="http://bx.businessweek.com/business-school-rankings/">Business Exchange</a>, a social curation product I helped create at BusinessWeek, has referred nearly 11 times the number of visitors than Google.<br />
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* Even more damning, the number of referrals from Google during the site's first six months is only 25% more than two press releases we've published on <a href="http://prweb.com/releases/2010/08/prweb4400454.htm">PRWeb</a>.<br />
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What has happened to Google is an all-too-familiar problem that plagues so many companies that become big and successful: Awash in cash, they begin pursuing all kinds of other opportunities, neglecting the core product that established their greatness. Those opportunities ultimately become distractions that lead to a company's serious decline. Competition emerges to take advantage of the neglect. The incumbent pretends all is well and benefits from both the dominant lead is already has and the long lag time that it takes more nimble and innovative Davids to slay the Goliath.<br />
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We are seeing the early stages of this battle which has been in force for at least five years. The Davids have been hitting the Google Goliath on a fairly consistent basis, shots to the body that bruise but rarely penetrate. This Goliath is still on its feet, but Facebook and Twitter have scored such big hits over the past three years that the giant is beginning to sway and stumble.John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com338tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-91831007533862517922010-09-09T10:26:00.000-07:002010-09-09T10:28:14.068-07:00Picking a Logo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAMi5Ys8TOcW3Pv52XgrAaKbgSRsyNLKK75gGfD7l6U4ZEH6GmEqm8RAGr2cxQ_5PM_8Vm9eEnk8RsH-jwZGFMnCnLLxQaKriy5u5dRVECjXkPqnShpIYSLBZArxak411HvBBEHe7ZP40/s1600/Slingshot+logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="64" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAMi5Ys8TOcW3Pv52XgrAaKbgSRsyNLKK75gGfD7l6U4ZEH6GmEqm8RAGr2cxQ_5PM_8Vm9eEnk8RsH-jwZGFMnCnLLxQaKriy5u5dRVECjXkPqnShpIYSLBZArxak411HvBBEHe7ZP40/s320/Slingshot+logo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>So now that <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/">PoetsandQuants</a> is well on its way, we're working on the design of our next website: Slingshots for David. The idea is simple: it's a site to provide tools and ideas to help entrepreneurs. Sure, there are lots of sites aimed at the small business and entrepreneurship market. Our Gypsy Rose Lee gimmick is to examine entrepreneurship from the perspective of the disrupter. So our lens will be disruptive business models and the disrupters themselves: How they think? How they create disruptive models to compete? What we can learn from them?<br />
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Which leads me to this: What do you think of the logo above?John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com339tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-23298793102925648762010-08-22T15:37:00.000-07:002010-08-22T15:42:46.856-07:00Hello Google!I'm happy to report that Google has finally discovered the <a href="http://PoetsandQuants.com/">PoetsandQuants.com</a> needle in the Internet haystack. It seems that the world's biggest search engine began listing direct links to the site yesterday--12 days after <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/">PoetsandQuants</a> went live.<br />
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Interestingly, unlike Bing, the direct link shows up as the fourth result on page one after you Google "<a href="http://poetsandquants.com/">poetsandquants</a>." The first mention? A blogger from India who noted that a post of his was on our site. The second and third results point to the Twitter feed for the site. And then finally, in the fourth place, is the direct link.<br />
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Thank you, Google!John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com441tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-9476379067241563352010-08-18T18:23:00.000-07:002010-08-18T18:26:51.142-07:00Bing vs. Google: Guess Who Wins?It's now been ten days since the launch of our first website--<a href="http://poetsandquants.com/">PoetsandQuants</a>--in the network. Thanks much to everyone who suggested ways to get noticed by Google's mysterious algorithms. There were quite a few very good ideas, some of which I put into effect. Thanks to a suggestion, for example, I have now submitted my URL for <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/">PoetsandQuants</a> directly to Google as well as Google News. Several days later, I did the same at both Bing and at Yahoo. Interestingly, Yahoo tries to make this a business, charging newcomers to the web $299 for expedited service, or more if you sell porn.<br />
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I haven't heard from any of them, except Google News, which rejected my URL in a computer-generated email on the basis that we don't produce news, even though new stories and features go up daily. Oh well.......<br />
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So what has happened since my last post a week ago now that we've been live for ten full days? Type in "PoetsandQuants" in Google's search box and what do you get now? Not a single direct link to the site (see below), at least through the first ten pages of results (I just couldn't put myself through the trouble of digging deeper). You can find PoetsandQuants on the first page of results but only because of our Twitter feed, Facebook page, YouTube channel or coverage of our launch (we were written about by BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, MediaBistro, MINonline, among many others. Strangely, a blogger from Pune, India, who wrote a post on how we published something from him, appears as the fifth item on page one--well ahead the stories by The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek. One improvement from the last time we did this a week ago: the weblog link for Viagra fell to page nine from page five and now resides with all kinds of other irrelevant results, including links from livingwithyourdog.com.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFyhoD2llnLnqKwvQNqafqDWXfG20ltRN7TNCbv6xp54yYZw6y9wvXPb9kgo77ekUtCPyVoXG9dLnWex4wXRYpjfzgp2D3kzh9xcj756pmNYs5Ryzrzo1gI-NVvdsb0Z5orlQjo5ZzBp0/s1600/Picture+21.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFyhoD2llnLnqKwvQNqafqDWXfG20ltRN7TNCbv6xp54yYZw6y9wvXPb9kgo77ekUtCPyVoXG9dLnWex4wXRYpjfzgp2D3kzh9xcj756pmNYs5Ryzrzo1gI-NVvdsb0Z5orlQjo5ZzBp0/s320/Picture+21.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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Google the headline of the most-read story on the site to date: "Our New MBA Ranking of the Top 50 U.S. Schools." What comes up? No direct links from Google. The page one results do include a link to Tweetmeme, which obviously swept up Tweets on the story, and there's a section Google now calls "Results from People in Your Social Circle," that grabs posts from Facebook and Twitter.<br />
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So let's try Googling the latest article published on PoetsandQuants just this afternoon: "My Story: From an Army Ranger in Iraq to Harvard Business School." You already know the answer. Google has no direct links to the story or the site. Yes, the search engine did pick up our Facebook post along with a tweet that is, respectively, the number one and two results on the first page. So at least you can find it, even if it's not a direct hit.<br />
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What about Bing? We tried PoetsandQuants and a direct link immediately pops up as the number one result on page one (see below). We tried "Our New MBA Ranking of the Top 50 Schools" and Bing serves a direct link to the story as its first result on page one, even ahead of the BusinessWeek rankings which have been around since 1988. How about the latest story about the Harvard MBA who was an Army Ranger in Iraq? You guessed it. Bing provides a direct link to the piece, again the number one result on the page. Obviously, Yahoo Search delivers the same results because it's now powered by Bing.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMYkxNV-22lvqbpKVZhz3UHT0yJeRxX0P-tR2MXi5R1TOc41Li8Cy9q2AMNaxtB52QfyCtP5twucsRBgee8LVa1ToIYz7IK4DvoQCAtQYRWP76Ha1RyvLzpbh7wnwA3RVWxHLPo88ZOqk/s1600/Picture+19.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMYkxNV-22lvqbpKVZhz3UHT0yJeRxX0P-tR2MXi5R1TOc41Li8Cy9q2AMNaxtB52QfyCtP5twucsRBgee8LVa1ToIYz7IK4DvoQCAtQYRWP76Ha1RyvLzpbh7wnwA3RVWxHLPo88ZOqk/s320/Picture+19.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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Colleagues have told me that it could easily take Google 45 days to find our site. So perhaps I have at least another 35 days to wait. But somehow Bing already has found the needle in the Internet haystack. I'm surprised by the speed and the quality of their search results as much as I am mystified by Google's inability to deliver on the expectation that it is the world's leading search engine.John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com320tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-72763114945776041832010-08-11T17:34:00.000-07:002010-08-11T21:01:04.843-07:00Google? Where are you?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsThd9eA5KIbQgy0oPJ7y53Ax4OW_9KjOPew5u99Xt1HEH4FsfvagL16lYUlYKlLyld0U0_58jViSO_j1b9OHppk8b7GoJO0kyS-9vks36fH7YfCIUbdcO7GSeLykNjJpFYphG1C7FsdI/s1600/PandQStackedlogo_Color.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsThd9eA5KIbQgy0oPJ7y53Ax4OW_9KjOPew5u99Xt1HEH4FsfvagL16lYUlYKlLyld0U0_58jViSO_j1b9OHppk8b7GoJO0kyS-9vks36fH7YfCIUbdcO7GSeLykNjJpFYphG1C7FsdI/s200/PandQStackedlogo_Color.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Monday of this week was a big day for me. I launched <a href="http://PoetsandQuants.com/">http://PoetsandQuants.com</a>, the first in a network of niche business websites. The site is devoted to the coverage of MBAs and graduate business education. One of the most fascinating aspects of our debut is what Google has been able to discover, or fail to find, about the site. First off, a little background. This is not a blog, but a website chock full of stories, analysis, photographs, and video. It's updated daily. It has been written about by BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal. It has been heavily supported via social media with a Twitter feed, a Facebook page, a LinkedIn group, and a YouTube channel.<br />
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So what do you find when you Google "poetsandquants?" Not a single mention of the actual website. On page one of Google's results, you'll find links to my Twitter feed, to this blog, to the blog of an MBA applicant who has been featured on the site, and finally in the top five, a link to my YouTube channel. In sixth place is a bogus operation called sitereporting.org that offers an entirely inaccurate report on the site generated by an algorithm. In the seventh and eight spots are links to a press release about the launch of <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/">PoetsandQuants</a>. In the ninth and tenth places are links to topsy.com and ubervu.com, sites that track and aggregate tweets. Still not a single link to the actual site I've created.<br />
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It gets worse. As you go through the first five pages of Google results, there are all kinds of websites that have essentially highjacked Google, rendering its search product less useful and helpful to users. There's a so-called <a href="http://werblog.com/">weblog</a> that is little more than a place to advertise Viagra and Cialis. There's links to TweetMeme, Interceder, tweetcepts, twapperkeeper, rallyclips, and whotechpunditstweet, among many others. Most of them are search traps that have gamed Google. There's even a link to one fool who has no idea who I am yet calls me a "<a href="http://www.comicon.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=572424&page=87">douchebag</a>" on page three of Google's results for <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/">PoetsandQuants</a>. (See the screenshot below to get a real glimpse of how bad Google's results are.) Get through the first ten pages of results and there is still not a direct link to the site.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdSLkzHjeZPdD-zGPYFqDII7TpYuIwPUUyq2qCf9zR-EDyRqFE-f0eET255wGkPvT7xWKi7DNPwPf95TgbAoLdPVWg49PELLY8dShnFKpwIF1uDYF89UblEgFd_EDGZ6x4-Gvw2RvpBiA/s1600/Picture+17.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="337" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdSLkzHjeZPdD-zGPYFqDII7TpYuIwPUUyq2qCf9zR-EDyRqFE-f0eET255wGkPvT7xWKi7DNPwPf95TgbAoLdPVWg49PELLY8dShnFKpwIF1uDYF89UblEgFd_EDGZ6x4-Gvw2RvpBiA/s400/Picture+17.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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I then Googled (don't you hate that it has become a verb?) the headline to the most popular story on the site for the past three days: "Our New MBA Ranking of the Top 50 Schools." There's TweetMeme again in the first two results, Friendfeed in the second, Twitter in the fourth and fifth spots, and finally Facebook in the sixth position. Not a single direct link to the site that reported, wrote, edited and published the story.<br />
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A lot of the coverage of <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/">PoetsandQuants</a> is devoted to MBA rankings due to their popularity and controversy. For the launch, we not only published the new ranking referred to above. We also published a ranking of the top 30 schools outside the U.S., and even an analysis of the rankings cranked out by BusinessWeek, Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, The Financial Times, and The Economist, ranking the rankings. For the debut alone, there were a dozen different stories on MBA rankings. So naturally, I Googled "MBA rankings." Not surprisingly, there's not a single link to <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/">PoetsandQuants</a> in the first ten pages of results. I didn't bother to look much after that, I confess.<br />
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Now, it's not that I'm unaware of the importance of search engine maximization (SEO). When I was editor-in-chief at BusinessWeek.com, we had a full-time SEO expert on staff. I worked closely with my web developer on SEO issues for the WordPress platform we're built on. As I created the content for the site, I was careful to write simple headlines and multiple tags to allow Google to find all the information on the site.<br />
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So where is Google? I don't have a clue. Luckily, our traffic has been impressive out of the gate, thanks to the BusinessWeek and Wall Street Journal mentions, and all the attention we've paid to social media. Twitter and Facebook, in particular, are delivering amazing numbers of people to <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/">PoetsandQuants</a>. Every day, the traffic sets another new record. As for Google, nothing. This goes to the quality of Google's primary product: search. If Google can't find PoetsandQuants or any of the stories published on the site, I wonder how many other legitimate, substantive efforts are also going undiscovered because Google's algorithms have been so effectively gamed.<br />
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Or am I judging Google unfairly? Does the mother of all search engines take a lot longer to find that needle in the haystack that <a href="http://poetsandquants.com/">PoetsandQuants</a> obviously is.John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com742tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-86000637909963004462010-08-06T09:42:00.000-07:002010-08-06T09:44:17.662-07:00PoetsandQuants.comFinally! I'm sending this release to media friends today.<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://PoetsandQuants.com/">PoetsandQuants.com</a></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Debuts as First in a New Network of Business Websites Created by former BusinessWeek and Fast Company Editor<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">C-Change Media Co. will debut the first in a network of business websites and social networks with the Aug. 9<sup>th</sup> launch of <a href="http://PoetsandQuants.com/">PoetsandQuants.com</a>, a site devoted to the coverage of graduate business school education. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“With PoetsandQuants, our goal is to become the go-to place for serious applicants to the best MBA programs in the world,” said John A. Byrne, chairman of C-Change Media and editor-in-chief of PoetsandQuants. “It’s also the very first of what we expect to be a network of at least a dozen sites and hundreds of bloggers serving important business niches, from doing business in China, to entrepreneurs who use disruptive business models for competitive advantage.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Each C-Change site will rely on an editorial approach that uses original content, the curation of must-read stories and blog posts from around the world on the specific topic, as well as a serious community of users. “Those are the three Cs in C-Change that will differentiate what we do from others,” said Byrne. “But the most crucial difference is that we will produce stories, features and information that is highly creative, thoughtful and substantive, as well as meaningful for our readers. The mission of PoetsandQuants is to help people make one of the most important, and ultimately most expensive, decisions in their professional careers.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">PoetsandQuants is a natural starting point for Byrne, formerly executive editor of BusinessWeek magazine, editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek.com, and editor-in-chief of Fast Company. As BusinessWeek’s management editor, he created the first regularly published rankings of business schools in 1988, authored four editions of BusinessWeek’s Guidebook to the Best Business Schools, and built out the brand’s business school franchise on the web in the mid-1990s.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Each site will aggressively employ a social media strategy to attract and retain a large target audience. PoetsandQuants, for example, is launching with pages, feeds and channels on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. The site also will use targeted advertising on Facebook to attract users.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Debut stories on PoetsandQuants:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"># The most authoritative ranking of the top 50 U.S. business schools ever published.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"># The most authoritative ranking of the top 30 non-U.S. business schools ever published.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"># A ranking of the rankings of the best schools that closely examines and explains the flaws in the methodologies of every major full-time MBA list.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"># School vs. school comparisons that highlight the cultural and numerical differences, as well as strengths and weaknesses between schools that compete against each other for the best applicants.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"># A new social network for MBA applicants and MBA students at the best schools, with community groups on such topics as social entrepreneurship and post-MBA dreams and hopes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">About PoetsandQuants: </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">PoetsandQuants is a self-funded venture of Corte Madera, CA-based C-Change Media, although the company plans to raise capital from outside sources as it expands its network of business sites and bloggers. For the launch, C-Change has partnered with San Francisco-based Higher Edge Marketing Services and New York-based Knewton GMAT prep for advertising, marketing and some editorial content. The site was developed by Chicago-based Sandbox Development and Consulting Inc., and designed by Yellow Farm Studios.</span>John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com387tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-89259970908017840002010-06-02T12:23:00.000-07:002010-06-02T12:25:23.636-07:00Are You A Poet or a Quant?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSTDlshLKjZpioJWNAHHdV-VxZrOn06WcRom6TkUzdt3G4T-SQbPTjC96ZmBgaDs0Z2CWmMirFxt-8_nTi8UJFrpgIgzeb1NcknnSjxOgiSfoO1mZHefTfkt0OaC_V_E-JTi1Tjm6Bmvw/s1600/PoetAvatar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSTDlshLKjZpioJWNAHHdV-VxZrOn06WcRom6TkUzdt3G4T-SQbPTjC96ZmBgaDs0Z2CWmMirFxt-8_nTi8UJFrpgIgzeb1NcknnSjxOgiSfoO1mZHefTfkt0OaC_V_E-JTi1Tjm6Bmvw/s200/PoetAvatar.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>I've been terribly neglectful about posting on a regular basis. The reason is simple: I've been flat out working to get a series of websites launched as part of C-Change Media. I've been creating a business plan, deck and design brief, talking to partners, negotiating with vendors, assigning stories to freelance writers, testing social network platforms, helping to guide a designer and a technologist to get us up and running. I've also been creating a wealth of content myself (when you're an entrepreneur, you do it all--taking photos, shooting video, reporting, writing, and editing, along with all the business side duties as well.) This gets increasingly complex when you are launching several sites on different business topics. In any case, we're getting close to a debut later this month of Poets&Quants.com. It's a site devoted to an area of business coverage I know a lot about: graduate business education. Back in 1988, as management editor of Business Week magazine, I created the first regularly done MBA rankings. I wrote three guidebooks on business schools and also built out Business Week's online presence in this field in the mid-1990s. For years, I also supervised our coverage of MBA and Executive Education.<br />
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I have a confession to make. I really missed reporting and writing. Before leaving BusinessWeek in early December, I had been an editor/manager for more than seven years: four at BusinessWeek as executive editor of the magazine and editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek.com and another three at Fast Company where I was editor-in-chief. I missed the joy of discovery that occurs when you go into the field and interview people, bring back your reporting and insights, synthesize what you've learned and then put it all in writing. I'm hands-on, for sure, having already visited Dartmouth, Harvard, Stanford, and London Business School to get back in touch with the graduate business education market.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9SajAWSkmMakBJeW8WlQUuK8sJV626Me4NvQTUKHAjAq_UIlBMj8TBv-B-k5V3b01OCKc0A2rkmM-7mlENTlJeiEwYdNS5uVSBbm1s9kuIUcQL8HuvZsONgKumQTQp99CgIdzHw5V_Y/s1600/QuantAvatar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9SajAWSkmMakBJeW8WlQUuK8sJV626Me4NvQTUKHAjAq_UIlBMj8TBv-B-k5V3b01OCKc0A2rkmM-7mlENTlJeiEwYdNS5uVSBbm1s9kuIUcQL8HuvZsONgKumQTQp99CgIdzHw5V_Y/s200/QuantAvatar.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Why Poets & Quants? Because it’s part of the language and culture of every MBA school. Poets are MBA candidates with liberal arts undergraduate degrees. Not surprisingly, perhaps, they often struggle with the finance and statistics courses. Quants are students with business, financial or engineering backgrounds who are undaunted by spreadsheets and statistical analysis but may have some trouble writing a well structured, smartly argued paper. Many MBA programs consciously combine poets and quants in teams so they can take advantage of each other’s skills. At P&Q, our goal will be to help both the poets and the quants make the best possible choice for an MBA education.<br />
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We've already put up a <a href="http://twitter.com/PoetsAndQuants">Twitter stream</a> @PoetsAndQuants. And we have a very cool logo for the site thanks to the exceptionally talented Kristen Young over at YellowFarmStudios. Tell us what you think of it.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPy0LtFgYWnXH2l9pJLpNtdwlHohJ3tL_vbejYRRrjMulWQtkHpc1jeajmPnoAIppwxrbQfYbc1Oh8TNul90vgsm9jjhJL3GieADPJSpmdtbrsnpKCFMexyivc5XQ8CJViRK_abJOShIc/s1600/PandQlogo_Color.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="85" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPy0LtFgYWnXH2l9pJLpNtdwlHohJ3tL_vbejYRRrjMulWQtkHpc1jeajmPnoAIppwxrbQfYbc1Oh8TNul90vgsm9jjhJL3GieADPJSpmdtbrsnpKCFMexyivc5XQ8CJViRK_abJOShIc/s400/PandQlogo_Color.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com414tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-61469295812148287432010-05-05T15:15:00.000-07:002010-05-06T12:16:06.542-07:00A New iPad Owner--Finally<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjQcj9Isb5Mpo3cYKzpz7cMpGe4nJf3F9JXkzuSdnq_zRqeOYPu1me1aRSNOWszBhDOeO2sHildA6KyMF5I5Skfdn9jnin9VUPOmxnkKL8vYhuqSUihEVA4OWE_S9C_wCSJsfI7x8k2dw/s1600/doc-art-2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjQcj9Isb5Mpo3cYKzpz7cMpGe4nJf3F9JXkzuSdnq_zRqeOYPu1me1aRSNOWszBhDOeO2sHildA6KyMF5I5Skfdn9jnin9VUPOmxnkKL8vYhuqSUihEVA4OWE_S9C_wCSJsfI7x8k2dw/s200/doc-art-2.png" width="200" /></a></div>A few months back, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPad, I predicted it would be just another nail in the coffin for traditional media. Why? Because it would more easily replace print and if media companies still gave their content away, their print readership would erode as quickly as their advertising revenue has diminished.<br />
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Well, I finally bought my own iPad last week and have to tell you I am hooked. The iPad makes reading, listening to and watching media better than ever. Frankly, it's hard to put down. When the print edition of The New York Times arrived on Sunday, I just let it be, preferring to use my iPad to access all kinds of information rather than pick up the old newspaper. I wandered through all kinds of content, including the NYT, YouTube, NPR, etc., rather than dive into the physical artifact at my feet. Which only reinforces my belief that the iPad is another nail--if media companies continue to make all their content free. It's simply a preferable way to read journalism.<br />
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So far, of course, the media offerings on the iPad are currently few and not that all impressive. Much has been written about the absence of The New York Times' mega-app which is still in limbo. Zinio's newsstand of magazines is a bit of a hit-or-miss mess. As far as I'm concerned, the few standouts so far in media are these:<br />
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1) NPR. Designed by Bottle Rocket, NPR's iPad app is the single best news and feature application available today. It has a spectacular carousel interface that is fun to use, and it works like a gem. Bravo to the folks at NPR for getting it out so quickly, but mostly for making an app that is enjoyable to use, that easily accesses the great content produced by NPR, and that makes great use of this media player's sizable audio files.<br />
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2) USA Today. There's a wealth of content here and it's highly accessible on this app. This is well-designed and cleverly implemented. For now, it's all free which puts USA Today in the forefront for iPad news junkies.<br />
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3) BBC. Not as good as either NPR or USA Today, but pretty damn good, nonetheless, for the great content produced by the BBC. It's also obviously free.<br />
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What are your favorites?John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com194tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-54069247343838675242010-03-05T09:39:00.000-08:002010-03-05T09:43:35.953-08:00An Offer I Can't Refuse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDGOjhGM02ZR2JdM7OtAI2gJcnJYJ4Ds3ZxBwomX7L1pwKCKGYz9lZzDFYTcAIwYVDhEXHVUQk6jFLx1FggWWNB6waeRsHplxYwdw8vo_zI6esFS5H-MF_t75NYUDWGQJRVu1y8P1EmIw/s1600-h/images-2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDGOjhGM02ZR2JdM7OtAI2gJcnJYJ4Ds3ZxBwomX7L1pwKCKGYz9lZzDFYTcAIwYVDhEXHVUQk6jFLx1FggWWNB6waeRsHplxYwdw8vo_zI6esFS5H-MF_t75NYUDWGQJRVu1y8P1EmIw/s200/images-2.jpeg" width="143" /></a></div>In yesterday's snail mail came an extraordinary offer from a magazine I respect and admire--Inc., the journal for entrepreneurs. It was one of those subscription offers we all get from time to time. But this one offered the lowest price I have ever seen for a mainstream business magazine: $5 for a year's subscription or $10 for three full years. The latter offer provides 30 issues of the magazine for 33 cents a copy, less than the cost to mail the magazine. Add in the costs of reporting, writing, editing, design, art, printing and paper, and it's not hard to see that Inc. is losing quite a bit of money on every issue it sells. My guess is that the cost to produce a single issue of Inc. is closer to $1.50 to $1.75. So Inc., which is owned by Mansueto Ventures, my former employer at Fast Company, is willing to take a loss of well over a dollar an issue to get me as a subscriber. And this is for an exceptional magazine of very high quality, smart writing, and attractive design.<br />
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Why? Largely because it's doing what almost all magazines do: it's trying to maintain a circulation or rate base that is higher than it's natural demand. By keeping its rate base at its current level, it can charge advertisers a higher price than it otherwise could. Inc. is hardly alone in playing this game. Pretty much every U.S. magazine has the same strategy. If you're the circulation director of a publication, you have a simple choice: pay large direct mail costs to get new subscribers who really want the magazine, or lower your subscription costs to a point where you're pretty much making an offer that is hard to refuse. Although I have never paid for a subscription to Inc., I'm filling out a check for $10 right now. As a magazine junkie and a new entrepreneur, I simply cannot refuse this offer. Inc., you got me.John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com114tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-76705043167973703302010-03-04T10:14:00.000-08:002010-03-04T13:44:11.575-08:00Why Digital News Consumers Are So Promiscuous<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNWTXdtf1XxfHw98HnSONkR1_R6jNWbL7UzpoQoGNd6iEyqvbNMED9eds771qa46eqj_3-s5IWkMtBVUlChAobX926GLG2OPmVOMZWFw01eWqNKguW8un_s_w9BkdhFrwH1713dEAg-ao/s1600-h/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNWTXdtf1XxfHw98HnSONkR1_R6jNWbL7UzpoQoGNd6iEyqvbNMED9eds771qa46eqj_3-s5IWkMtBVUlChAobX926GLG2OPmVOMZWFw01eWqNKguW8un_s_w9BkdhFrwH1713dEAg-ao/s200/images.jpeg" width="130" /></a></div>One of the most surprising stats to come out of the <a href="http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/understanding_participatory_news_consumer">new Pew Research Center study</a> released earlier this week is that 65% of online news consumers say they don't have a single favorite website for news. That number inevitably brings you to one of two conclusions: 1) The web is still a wide open marketplace for new content startups because there are precious few dominant players in the space, or 2) Digital news consumers are far more likely to be promiscuous when it comes to the news. Because the web makes it so easy to sample many media sites (and they are largely free), it's far more likely for people not to have a single favorite website for news. Indeed, the study also showed that only seven percent of Americans get their news from a single source and that 46% of Americans get their news from four to six media platforms on a typical day.<br />
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That sounds about right to me. At BusinessWeek, we once asked McKinsey and Co. to study our web users and found to our surprise and chagrin that our brand users were remarkably promiscuous. On average, they visited 18 different media brands--TV networks, newspapers, magazines, and websites--a week to satisfy their news appetites. At first, we thought this was a shocking number, showing little loyalty to our brand. On reflection, however, we came to realize that many of the readers of BusinessWeek are news junkies. They devour information and analysis, and it's obvious that they would seek news from lots of sources on a regular basis. At the time, BusinessWeek was not a news site to be depended on for the most important breaking news, but rather an analysis and insight website, picking and choosing the issues on which to opine and dig deeper. But I digress.<br />
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I think the fact that 65% of Americans don't have a single favorite website means both 1 and 2, not either or. This finding tells me there is still plenty of room on the web for new, smart ways to make the news more participatory, personal, and social. New web entrepreneurs who adopt disruptive technologies and business models are likely to prosper. And because of the overwhelming wealth of information on the web, it's unlikely that people might have a "single favorite website" for news. To my way of thinking, that's a good thing, assuring that readers get a wide diversity of opinions and ideas from a wide variety of brands.<br />
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A few other fascinating results from the Pew study: Our relationship to news is becoming "portable, personalized, and participatory." Some 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones; about 28% of people on the internet have customized their home page to include news from sources on topics that interest them, and some 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites from Facebook to Twitter.<br />
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Concludes Pew: "To a great extent, people's experience of news, especially on the internet, is becoming a shared social experience as people swap links in emails, post news stories on their social networking site feeds, highlight news stories in their Tweets, and haggle over the meaning of events in discussion threads. More than eight in ten online news consumers get or share links in emails."<br />
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I suspect these numbers will dramatically increase in the near future as news becomes even more of a social activity. The old rule of thumb that only 10% of Internet users are pro-active and only 10% of them participate by writing comments on stories is just that: old. Increasingly, as this Pew study clearly shows, more and more people are contributing to news. It has become a "shared social experience." It's why I believe deep and meaningful engagement with your audience is an essential ingredient for a news organization.<br />
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What do you think?John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com153tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-14633822499586724142010-02-20T13:15:00.000-08:002010-02-20T18:14:22.965-08:00Are Aggregators Thieves?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSmU6D7Jnz7JURdcWnQbeCkeTETPRS_C6C1DhdsoFMYmA9f3P0bqo-JUNEDbk-cxJaLOnnFTB_MbRC816Aoy9mGe763zXiQiEwcqEAufh4JaBkPlIrO05fsXYXyygJ8C3KF4rLp5InFPs/s1600-h/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSmU6D7Jnz7JURdcWnQbeCkeTETPRS_C6C1DhdsoFMYmA9f3P0bqo-JUNEDbk-cxJaLOnnFTB_MbRC816Aoy9mGe763zXiQiEwcqEAufh4JaBkPlIrO05fsXYXyygJ8C3KF4rLp5InFPs/s200/images.jpeg" width="160" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Entrepreneur Mark Cuban caused a bit of a stir earlier this month when he said that Google and other content aggregators essentially are vampires that suck the blood of the media. The only way to put a stop to it, Cuban added, was to "put a stake through their gosh darn hearts."</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span">"You guys are always looking for the next thing to save you," he told media players at a conference in New York. "Your core competency is you create news, you create content. You just have to stop offering your necks to the vampires."</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span">It was a good headline for a day or two on most media sites, and the comments drew some </span><a href="http://searchengineland.com/google-vampire-mark-cuban-mahalo-35039"><span class="Apple-style-span">fascinating critiques</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"> because Cuban is an investor in Mahalo, which leans heavily on aggregation to create content for its own website. Other than the particularly harsh language, there also was nothing new about the complaint. We've heard a similar story from Rupert Murdoch, Sam Zell, and a host of other people in traditional media who want to put pay walls up to prevent their content from being stolen.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span">But the essential question remains: Are aggregators really thieves?</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span">Truth is, most media brands work very hard to get their work distributed. In my earlier years at Forbes magazine, we had a team of three full-time publicists who worked behind-the-scenes to get media pickup of stories, book writers and editors on radio and television shows, and get the brand maximum exposure. This was also true at BusinessWeek which had (and still has) it's own in-house public relations staff, as well as an external firm to promote BW journalism to prominent bloggers and other media organizations.</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span">As long as aggregators credit the source and even link back to the original content, how is that any different than a media brand's own attempts to gain wider distribution of its stories through PR agents? </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></div><span style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Take a look at three major players who smartly use aggregation as a part of their business models: </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span">The Huffington Post</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span">, </span><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/?cid=cs:topnav:hp"><span class="Apple-style-span">The Daily Beast</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span">, and </span><a href="http://www.newser.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span">Newser</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span">. At all three of these news websites, aggregation is a core component of the content mix. HuffPo snatches paragraphs from pretty much every media outlet and blogger that has something worth saying and often rewrites what many say. The Daily Beast wouldn't be able to produce its intelligent and entertaining daily news digest, </span><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/"><span class="Apple-style-span">Cheat Sheet</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span">, without borrowing and stealing from other media. Indeed, it's little more than a smart rewrite of the day's most important or sexiest news from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, and other traditional media brands with an occasional credit to HuffPo or Politico. Yet, for The Daily Beast, it's one of the most prominent features on its home page and it's used to drive daily traffic to the site via RSS feed. In short, The Daily Beast is making money from the best work of other media outlets which invest hundreds of millions of dollars annually creating that content.</span></span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span">Newser, meantime, takes an entirely different approach. It produces no original content, other than the blogged opinions of founder and provocateur Michael Wolf. Everything else is largely a short and snappy two-paragraph rewrite of the day's most entertaining news. Wolf is candid about what he's doing: The "About" section for the site reports that "Newser is a news aggregator with brains. We select the best news stories from hundreds of sources all over the web, read them for you, and summarize them in two succinct, sharply written paragraphs or less." It's </span><a href="http://www.newser.com/story/81382/dow-up-9-on-fed-rate-hike.html"><span class="Apple-style-span">stock market coverage</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"> on a recent day, posted 35 minutes after the market's close, was a graf and three bullet points, all taken from The Wall Street Journal, which posted its account just 16 minutes earlier. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span">A "</span><a href="http://www.newser.com/story/81287/blood-done-sign-my-name-cliched-but-important.html"><span class="Apple-style-span">review</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span">" of the new movie "Blood Done Sign My Name" opens with two short sentences followed by four grafs stolen from four reviews published by The Philadelphia Enquirer, New York Post, Variety, and Chicago Sun-Times. There are links to the original stories in all of these files--if you want them. So Newser not only credits the source, it essentially sends traffic to their sites—at least for the readers who want the full stories.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span">All of this is perfectly legal, falling within the rules of fair use. But is it ethical or moral? After all, Newser and other aggregators are profit-making enterprises whose business models are essentially dependent on the investment of billions of dollars to produce the content they steal.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I don’t believe its unethical and here’s why: 1) At least in the above examples, there is total transparency to what is going on, 2) The original source is given credit for the article, and 3) The aggregator provides highlighted ink sback to the original content, driving revenue-producing traffic back to the source.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span">This isn’t exactly what my high school English teacher would call plagiarism. Rather, it’s fulfilling the same aims of a publication’s PR department: getting wider distribution of content to enhance a brand’s image so that more readers will likely either buy the publication or go to its website. Whether those goals are achieved is another story.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span">What do you think?</span></span></div></span>John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com290tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-9059830296545279652010-02-18T19:02:00.000-08:002010-02-18T19:09:10.397-08:00Where Great Journalism Still Thrives<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXZXnj_BgY6vn5avWxx0HnCTFXbcduQZyFOjpIoGpZa5FTRqvDst_NEnX6eVFFztEtKb78R8KiFVWaa8-OOfdmGn9-HjmTzV_h_NFqpwIoOL1i5LqQ3VIfBvJeC_Z6Vboca8AQhHc7RbA/s1600-h/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXZXnj_BgY6vn5avWxx0HnCTFXbcduQZyFOjpIoGpZa5FTRqvDst_NEnX6eVFFztEtKb78R8KiFVWaa8-OOfdmGn9-HjmTzV_h_NFqpwIoOL1i5LqQ3VIfBvJeC_Z6Vboca8AQhHc7RbA/s200/images.jpeg" width="153" /></a></div>Over the past few weeks, I've had the honor and the privilege of judging many of the nation's best city and regional magazines for the annual awards handed out by the University of Missouri's J-School, my alma mater. And after reading quite a few of these magazines, I can say that I've been remarkably impressed, even surprised in some cases, with the magazines that typically report on the best chiefs, bartenders, or cosmetic surgeons in any given area of the country. Time after time, amid the listings of restaurants, clubs and spas, I've come across some of the best journalism in America: gripping narrative, compelling drama, and natural, vivid storytelling that draws you into something you never thought you would be interested in.<br />
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If I were teaching narrative writing, I wouldn't hesitate to assign any of these standout stories to my students. More importantly, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend these pieces to readers who cherish and respect the promise of what journalism can be when it is practiced at the highest level. These are pieces that I would have loved to edit myself, or even better, would have loved to had the joy to report and write.<br />
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"<a href="http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/media/Minnesota-Monthly/February-2009/Soldier-of-Misfortune/">Soldier of Misfortune</a>," by Beth Hawkins. Here is the highly compelling story of a guy, down on his luck, who went off to Iraq, not as a member of the U.S. military but as a paid private security guard for a contractor. The job ultimately cost him his life. He was captured by Iraqi insurgents, held for ransom, and ultimately tortured. I'll let you find out how this tragic story ends. Published by Minnesota Monthly, the story is a stunning example of great storytelling.<br />
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"<a href="http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2009/The-death-of-Michael-York-and-how-heroin-has-invaded-the-Chicago-suburbs/">Trashed: The Death of Michael York and How Heroin has Invaded the Chicago Suburb</a>s," by Bryan Smith. Published in Chicago magazine, this gripping story brings home to suburbia the tragedy of drug use and addiction. It's the tale of a teenager whose body turned up in an alley on the west side of Chicago. The high school student died of an apparent overdose from heroin after a weekend party in a suburban mansion. To cover up the accident, his "friends" dumped the body in an alley in the snow face-down at the foot of a dumpster.<br />
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"<a href="http://www.indianapolismonthly.com/november-2009/features/david-scott.aspx">Free Man</a>," by Tony Rehagen. Published by Indianapolis Monthly, this is the story of a man who spent 23 years in prison, wrongly convicted of murder. The writer catches up with him two years after his release and writes a brilliantly evocative story of how hard if not impossible it is to put your life back once you're jailed--even when you never should have been in prison in the first place.<br />
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"<a href="http://www.portlandmonthlymag.com/health-and-fitness/articles/0309-breastcancer/5/">The Last Days of My Left Breast</a>," by Viva Las Vegas. Published by Portland Monthly, this candid story is the harrowing first-person tale of a young woman who discovers that she has breast cancer. Because she is a stripper in a city club, the loss of her left breast not only has traumatic emotional and physical consequences. There are economic issues as well. It's an exceptionally honest and well-written account by a non-journalist and it makes for gripping reading.<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"<a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/preview/2009-09-01/feature">Mike Leach is Thinking</a>," by S.C. Gwynne. This Texas Monthly cover story deftly provides a multi-dimensional portrait of a pirate-crazy man who may be the best college football coach in the country. I am no football fan. In fact, as a lifelong rabid baseball fan, I rather dislike football. Yet I could not put this exceptionally-crafted profile down.</div><br />
"<a href="http://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/article.aspx?id=74426">The River Lady</a>," by Linda Vaccariello. This story, published in Cincinnati magazine, is the fascinating tale of a woman whose body was pulled from the Ohio River three years ago. Yet, no one could identify who she was. "No one was missing her," as one investigator put it.<br />
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"<a href="http://www.phillymag.com/articles/wrongful_death/">Wrongful Death</a>," by Jason Fagone. Yet another narrative that is almost impossible to put down, this piece is the behind-the-scenes story of the demise of one of Philadelphia's most famous law firms. Published in Philadelphia magazine, the drama opens when a young lawyer at the firm receives a simple text message from a friend: "sorry to hear about your firm."<br />
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"<a href="http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/_but_the_dream_should_die_why_ted_kennedy_should_be_the_last_kennedy_ever_elected_joe_keohane/">But the Dream Should Die</a>," by Joe Keohane. A highly provocative yet convincingly argued essay that explains why Ted Kennedy should be the last Kennedy we ever elect. It smartly ends a powerful portfolio of stories in Boston magazine on Sen. Kennedy's life and legacy. As the headline of the piece puts it: "The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, but the dream should die."<br />
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So even in this age of budget cuts, layoffs, newspaper and magazine closings, journalism that informs, inspires and entertains is being published every day in both likely and unlikely places. Thank God for that.John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com111tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-26948884858697978442010-02-02T11:24:00.000-08:002010-02-02T12:12:07.486-08:00Why Ads on the iPad & Other Tablets Won't Make a Difference<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeJJ-IEAWQAJ857XpVgm9NDf0plmbpZNg-JFZWIu9aaUxGZ02y0GauxiRvJiT_rcsThXbFovamhhufCLm2J4b5bJ-A0K02crHNG0wVWxlqlSG8Mx6rrLPHqVjc8JLjWYz5BIW_rbnXx8E/s1600-h/apple_ipad5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeJJ-IEAWQAJ857XpVgm9NDf0plmbpZNg-JFZWIu9aaUxGZ02y0GauxiRvJiT_rcsThXbFovamhhufCLm2J4b5bJ-A0K02crHNG0wVWxlqlSG8Mx6rrLPHqVjc8JLjWYz5BIW_rbnXx8E/s200/apple_ipad5.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br />
</span> </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://www.kalemm.com/">Karsten Lemm</a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">, a San Francisco-based freelance writer who works mainly for the German newsmagazine Stern, makes a convincing case that my earlier post on the iPad gave short shrift to the advantages of tablet reading. </span></span><a href="http://www.c-changemedia.com/2010/01/apples-ipad-another-nail-in-coffin-of.html?showComment=1264747112898#c7997240730778124665"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">As he puts it</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">: "The Kindle is hardly a great device for displaying magazine content, and Amazon's conditions have been less than favorable to publishers. That's likely to change with increasing competition. The iPad, future Google Android tablets, and e-readers like Skiff and Plastic Logic Que give publishers at least a chance to offer a new kind of reading experience that people will be willing to pay for."</span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">I hope Karsten is right, but I have strong doubts. The free genie is out of the bottle, and it will be extremely hard--if not impossible--to get people to pay for what they already get for free. Even an old print guy like myself has to make a confession: Far too often I'll peruse the contents of a magazine at a newsstand. If there's a story I'm keenly interested in reading, I'll pass on buying the magazine and simply go to the website. I've done this for The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated, to name a few. There has to be three of four stories I badly wanted to read in a magazine before I'll pay for it on the newsstand.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Others suggested that tablet reading will allow advertisers to reach consumers in new and different ways, creating greater revenue for content providers. The basic problem with this argument is that few advertisers have used websites to smartly do multi-media ads, even though the ability to do so has been there for years. Even if advertisers take greater advantage of the digital space on an interactive e-book reader, it still won't offset the loss of print advertising. So the essential problem confronting old media doesn't substantially change. It's costs are badly out of sync with current revenue.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Yes, it's true that production and distribution costs account for a high percentage of the cost structure bringing down traditional media. </span></span><a href="http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=141788"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Ad Age</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> recently quoted Google's Hal Varian who says that typically 53% of a newspaper's budget goes to printing for distribution--costs eliminated through digital distribution--compared with 35% on the "core" functions of news gathering, editorial and administration. But what he many not know is that i</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">n many instances, costs are so out of control in traditional media companies that if every editorial employee were eliminated, they would still bleed red.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">As </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><a href="http://wiredpen.com/">Kathy Gill</a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> (aka kegill) smartly points out in a response to my blog post, there are significant cost savings associated with digital distribution. Kathy reminds us of an ugly truth many in journalism prefer to ignore: that readers have never really fully paid for content, anyway. "For newspapers," </span></span><a href="http://www.c-changemedia.com/2010/01/apples-ipad-another-nail-in-coffin-of.html?showComment=1264742785123#c2057395963379670974"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">she writes</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">, "we subscribers have never paid for the content of the paper with our wallets, we paid for it with our collective eyes. We paid for the convenience of having the paper delivered to our door, whether or not that fee actually covered distribution costs." </span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Today, we've trained a generation of readers not to pay for anything. With the exception of The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, Barron's and a few other niche sites, no one has cracked the code on the paid formula. Even The New York Times, which has the highest quality content on a consistent basis, hasn't figured out how to get money for its very valuable journalism. So there's little reason to think that the emergence of the iPad and a lot of competitive products will alter this reality.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">I'm not trying to view this glass as half empty, as </span></span><a href="http://profile.typepad.com/6p00d8341c118753ef"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Chris Herot</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> suggests, but I'm not very optimistic here from a financial point of view. I am, however, enthusiastic about the reading experience on a tablet based on my experience using the iPhone. It's a great and convenient way to access quality journalism and participate in community around that journalism. I suspect the iPad and its rivals will really ratchet up digital reading.</span></span></span></span>John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com137tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-55977966470496249232010-01-28T20:04:00.000-08:002010-01-28T21:11:20.403-08:00Apple's iPad -- Another Nail in the Coffin of Traditional Media<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Vq3U3ETn-2KCpoWHJJqR0kGktWQ3eeSOpykJlN_yRXmfmNgDylheVforhLPKRv9KOgoxCTfUo9O0klb21A7lB214DybHyegdSu0mV026LBEhk7pOuMKvoOWfjF_Ia0WwmKa6TjUoDR4/s1600-h/nyt-ipad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Vq3U3ETn-2KCpoWHJJqR0kGktWQ3eeSOpykJlN_yRXmfmNgDylheVforhLPKRv9KOgoxCTfUo9O0klb21A7lB214DybHyegdSu0mV026LBEhk7pOuMKvoOWfjF_Ia0WwmKa6TjUoDR4/s200/nyt-ipad.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />
If you're like me, you watched Steve Jobs' extraordinary performance yesterday introducing a new Apple product that is bound to revolutionize the way we use digital media. Even as a commonly skeptical journalist, I was deeply impressed with both Jobs and the new product, the iPad. What impact is it likely to have on traditional media?<br />
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Don't believe the folks who see this as a way for mainstream publishers to get rid of their highest costs and produce content at a profit. Some analysts are contending that the iPad platform enables newspapers and magazines to convey information in new and exciting ways. "Going forward, authors and designers will move away from a static presentation of information into one that is multimedia-based with video and other media content," Needham & Co. analyst Charles Wolf told the <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_14290117?nclick_check=1">Mercury News</a>. Great stuff, right?<br />
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For what it's worth, I see the iPad as little more than another nail in the coffin for print media. Why? Unless traditional media begins to charge for its content, the iPad, the Kindle, and other e-readers make it easier for users to access and conveniently read books, newspapers, and magazines at well below the costs to produce that content. When I ran BusinessWeek's online operations as editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek.com, we were among the first magazines to offer subscriptions on the Kindle. Now you'd think that was a great idea: we can charge people for our content, without incurring the high costs of production and distribution.<br />
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But for every monthly subscription BusinessWeek sold through Amazon for the Kindle, we received 75 cents--about 15% of the $4.95 cost of a single copy on the newsstand or a tiny fraction of the $49.99 price BW is asking on its website today for a year's subscription. That's right. A monthly subscription to a weekly magazine on the Kindle returned less than a buck to our company--far below our costs to report, write, edit, art, and design the contents of the magazine. Amazon sells a BusinessWeek subscription via Kindle for all of $2.49 a month, a rate that is profitable to Amazon but pretty much a disaster for a traditional media publisher. Though Apple has yet to create contracts with traditional publishers for the iPad, you can expect more of the same.<br />
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The obvious question is why would a publisher agree to such a low return? Most enter into these deals under the assumption that something is better than nothing. They also succumb to the pressure of agreeing to unprofitable deals to show others that they are "with it." Who wants to be left behind? If your key competitors are buckling under the pressure to give away their content for a pittance, you're likely to do the same.<br />
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Yet, as e-books continue to gain in popularity, more people will choose these digital subscriptions and forego a print purchase, either on the newsstand or via subscription. Without question, the iPad is going to accelerate the adoption of digital reading for books, newspapers, and magazines. It's why The New York Times is developing an app to take full advantage of the iPad's larger tablet size. But if traditional media can't charge a viable price for their products, all these deals are little more than extra nails in the coffin of the print business.<br />
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So as much as I love the iPad and all that it can do, I have to confess that it's only going to hasten the death of traditional media--not save it by reducing the high costs of printing and delivering a magazine.John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com88tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-29609279096498922002009-12-22T13:11:00.000-08:002009-12-25T11:35:06.670-08:00Google & Media: Biting the Hand that Feeds You<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvBdq2hXS-PaU504gv8pThMxKRg-M0VrJEwq2keUqxDUYsvB3DD8_GhFn9FombECM1o3Oeshcq-TsMyuFd4gteiRax5P5SXU0Y9y7BMip5xRTawSPW8IzZFRNueTROv9soI7YP63UE5ws/s1600-h/google.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvBdq2hXS-PaU504gv8pThMxKRg-M0VrJEwq2keUqxDUYsvB3DD8_GhFn9FombECM1o3Oeshcq-TsMyuFd4gteiRax5P5SXU0Y9y7BMip5xRTawSPW8IzZFRNueTROv9soI7YP63UE5ws/s200/google.jpg" /></a><br />
</div>A few days back, before I left for China and before the holiday season descended upon us, we tackled a key question: "What's the Biggest Mistake Media Companies Make Online?"<br />
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I received several solid answers from followers of this blog, including Frymaster who immediately took sides in the ongoing war between Traditional Media and Google. Wrote Frymaster: "I reject out-of-hand the assertion that Google is profiting from others' content. Rather, I say that Google profits from connecting users to content. It is a service that most web publishers appreciate greatly. Google, unlike any other search engine ever, goes to great pains to deliver the least-skewed results possible. Google is constantly on the hunt for people who game their system. That's why they succeed. There is a direct connection between Google's user-centric, community-oriented approach and their financial success."<br />
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Rupert Murdoch's protestations aside, there is no doubt that Google is driving vast amounts of traffic to websites run by traditional media companies. In recent years, most of BusinessWeek.com's growth came from search optimization and direct traffic. Up until only three years ago, the number one referring domain at BusinessWeek was always a portal until Google's popularity replaced Yahoo Finance and MSN Money as the top referrer. Search--largely Google--now accounts for some 45% of the traffic at BW.com, up from less than 20% in 2006. That simple little box is driving vast amounts of advertising inventory (and therefore revenue) to the site and it's no coincidence. In common with every other media brand, we did lots of things to make our site search friendly. We rewrote headlines, simplified URLs, hired an on-staff SEO expert to lead seminars in search optimization. In other words, we courted Google and the search traffic we achieved. It's a similar story everywhere else.<br />
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In the war between the traditional media brands and Google, the old cliche about biting the hand that feeds you is certainly in play. Some of the complaints from media can be attributed to sour grapes. Many incumbents resent that most efforts to find information on the Web no longer starts with a brand. It starts with Google which is largely brand agnostic. So, in effect, Google has become this massive transaction machine, and as everyone knows, transactions are the antithesis of relationships. If a brand wants a relationship with its audience, Google is getting in the way. It's how Google was able to siphon nearly $22 billion last year in advertising from traditional media. And it's the most obvious proof that media brands have diminished in value. People are more routinely turning to Google to get information, rather than a brand known for its expertise in a given area. They'll google (yes, I'm using Google as a verb) leadership before going to The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, BusinessWeek, or Harvard Business Review. They'll google President Clinton before going to The New York Times, Time, or Newsweek. Why? Because they trust Google to serve up unbiased results; because they want to see what is generally available out there and not tied to a brand, and because most brands no longer wield the power and influence they did years ago.<br />
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Instead of complaining about this and threatening to block Google from crawling a site, media companies would do well to step back and more fully understand what they really need to do: rebuild the relationships they have with their readers, viewers, users. To offset the massive transaction machine that Google is, media brands need to focus on restoring relationships with users. That's why "user engagement" is not an idle phrase to throw around but is essential to making a brand successful online. Original content isn't enough. Gee-whiz tech tricks aren't enough. Neither is a fancy design or a search trap gimmick. You need an audience that is deeply and meaningfully engaged in the content of a site, so engaged in fact that many of those users become collaborators, and that requires tremendous amounts of work and editorial involvement with the audience.<br />
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So when you hear yet another media mogul complain about Google, understand that the value of that mogul's brand already has been greatly diminished by transactions. And that's because the brand has done little to maintain and rebuild its relationships with its customers. This is where Frymaster hits the nail on the head: "There is a direct connection between Google's user-centric, community-oriented approach and their financial success." Media incumbents have to learn that a user-centric, community-oriented approach is crucial to their survival and their ultimate success online.John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com176tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-5286289927218554542009-12-19T18:59:00.000-08:002009-12-19T18:59:06.949-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU-nQJOrHamMUQvBPFxsnuVzBtt1h9CofiBi6YNPfHPcBptQ_Kp06rj8vU57e9bScUSkAQ0NsJKBg9PIR1kBIaMd4FgDc2hzRtsY_MI7ceNkmfI31C-X9CghdIDsbFq-vALP4TWR-I9Fo/s1600-h/C-ChangeMediaCCC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU-nQJOrHamMUQvBPFxsnuVzBtt1h9CofiBi6YNPfHPcBptQ_Kp06rj8vU57e9bScUSkAQ0NsJKBg9PIR1kBIaMd4FgDc2hzRtsY_MI7ceNkmfI31C-X9CghdIDsbFq-vALP4TWR-I9Fo/s320/C-ChangeMediaCCC.jpg" /></a><br />
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I'm liking this logo design done by my incredibly talented podcast producer Jaime Beauchamp. Jaime worked on our design group at BusinessWeek for many years, designing one of my favorite covers years ago. What do you think?John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com90tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-12593875105627956992009-12-06T05:11:00.000-08:002009-12-15T06:43:44.617-08:00Off to ChinaI'll be taking a break from my blog this coming week for an exciting reason: I'm off to China to meet with Chinese entrepreneurs, government officials, artists and non-profit leaders. Most of my time will be spent in Beijing, the cultural soul of China, and Shanghai, the financial go-go capital of the country. This will be the first time I have ever ventured to China so I'm very much looking forward to a deep dive into the country's culture, economics and people. A full report to come.John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com68tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-10922909775438179202009-12-04T19:45:00.000-08:002009-12-04T20:01:34.545-08:00My Final Podcast for BusinessWeek<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpRt_rdg-rifHkiNCTeUzWi8YDC9J5BD-0biBMy3rEiL2OEOAICmI5vhm4ifd6WteU0W0FCW8Hll48Y7vzCHIpLPdWtTXJy0_Z_bABfPKGUK_JJGSMySGp5A2mIzrvLey0MkdIFgZ8z4Y/s1600-h/johnByrne_podcast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" er="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpRt_rdg-rifHkiNCTeUzWi8YDC9J5BD-0biBMy3rEiL2OEOAICmI5vhm4ifd6WteU0W0FCW8Hll48Y7vzCHIpLPdWtTXJy0_Z_bABfPKGUK_JJGSMySGp5A2mIzrvLey0MkdIFgZ8z4Y/s200/johnByrne_podcast.jpg" /></a><br />
</div>I left our 46th floor multimedia studio for the last time this week after recording my 209th "Behind the Cover" podcast as BusinessWeek's executive editor. It feels like only yesterday when I walked into that studio for the first time in September of 2005 to begin these weekly podcasts in which I interview the author of the magazine's cover story. Since then, more than 12 million of these podcasts have been downloaded and it has consistently ranked among the top business podcasts in the world on iTunes. For years, I have been honored to receive countless letters, emails, and phone calls from listeners who told me how much they enjoyed these recordings. Dozens of fans also have approached me at conferences, seminars, and panel discussions at which I have participated, each of them going out of their way to say thank you. So let me (yes, that's me above in the studio) return the thanks to all of you for listening. <br />
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It's been a great ride to sit in a studio, with my friend, colleague and producer Jaime Beauchamp at the controls, and interview yet another journalist I respect and admire about his or her work. Through it all, I always tried to make these conversations honest, smart, and candid--a little peek at the magic in a hidden newsroom process between an editor and a writer. This last one, with London Bureau Chief Stanley Reed, <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/mediacenter/podcasts/cover_stories/covercast_12_04_09.htm">can be heard here</a> and is entitled "Why Dubai Matters: A Look at the Crisis in the Gulf." <br />
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A trademark of sorts to each of these podcasts is my selection of a song to open and close every recording. As my Tweeps know full well, I often tweeted the barebones of what the story would be and asked for their song choices. We've selected everything from jazz and popular music to classic and alternative rock. For this final podcast, I picked one of my obsessive favorites, Frank Sinatra. The tune: "That's Life." I think it works on a lot of levels. What do you think?John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com63tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-54260706010036128022009-12-04T00:21:00.000-08:002009-12-04T08:21:14.255-08:00The Biggest Mistake Media Companies Make OnlineYesterday, <a href="http://www.minonline.com/">Media Industry News</a> asked me three questions, one of which I shared with my Tweeps: What is the biggest mistake media companies make online? Nearly two dozen people weighed in with their own answers--and almost all of those responses are very good. Yet, I have my own take on this question that differs from most of the answers I received.<br />
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For all the talk about the importance of digital media, most traditional brands boast cultures, people, and processes that protect their dying assets (ie. print) at the expense of what is growing (ie. digital). There are a lot of reasons for this, and some of them are good ones. Print still brings in the vast majority of revenue. It somehow feeds in a more satisfying way the ego of editors and writers. And because the most resources are always devoted to the print product, the digital side remains a stepchild to the so-called main act--even when that act is unprofitable and dying.<br />
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As John Gardner once observed, most of the things that prevent the renewal of an organization can be found in the mind. It's not a matter of new ideas. "There is usually no shortage of new ideas," wrote Gardner in Self-Renewal. "The problem is to get a hearing for them. And that means breaking through the crusty rigidity and stubborn complacency of the status quo." Yet the rules, customs, and procedures in organizations always favor the past. That's why culture trumps strategy all the time. The cultural cues are that print (the past) is more important than digital (the future).<br />
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<a name='more'></a>No traditional media player has a web-first culture, yet that is exactly what is needed to make an online operation really successful. It's another reason why newcomers have all the advantages in this game, and incumbents will never really get it. Sure, there are a lot of other mistakes media companies make online. But they aren't as fatal as the culture problem which leads to the protection of a high cost structure to support <a href="http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=132779">a dying medium</a> and the refusal to embrace radical transformation.<br />
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My Tweeps offered up plenty of valid criticisms of traditional media's approach to digital. I tend to think that Mike Duda, Michael Bigley and Chris Hardwick (see directly below) get closest to the truth. But that culture problem is a deal breaker. Others weigh in :<br />
<ul><li>That online began as a stepchild and core people still are hanging on to the economics of "old" media and not embracing the reality or the opportunity of the web. <a href="http://twitter.com/MikeDuda">@MikeDuda</a>. </li>
<li>Media companies want their old business model to work online. It won't. They are failing. Pretty simple. From <a href="http://twitter.com/michaelbigley">@michaelbigley</a>.</li>
<li>Giving away product for free is biggest mistake. How can that ever be an effective business model? From <a href="http://twitter.com/cjhardwick">@cjhardwick</a>.</li>
<li>They focus too much on hits to the detriment of usability, e.g. having to click 20x to see the "Top 20" whatever. Usually abort after 3. From <a href="http://www.twitter.com/ddudgeon">@ddudgeon</a>. </li>
<li>Failure to engage the audience as peers in real conversations the way people really talk to each other. (Failure to be real.) From <a href="http://twitter.com/jterrito">@jterrito</a>.</li>
<li>Shoveling stories from the paper to the screen and not considering the capability of the Web to tell a more complete story. From <a href="http://twitter.com/annatauzin">@annatauzin</a>.</li>
<li>An us/them approach vs a community approach. From <a href="http://twitter.com/littlebrownpen">@littlebrownpen</a>.</li>
<li>Not listening to what's being said in social media channels. Simply carrying broadcast mentality to a new channel. From <a href="http://twitter.com/xybrewer">@xybrewer</a>. </li>
<li>Portals like My Yahoo offer customization. All others dump everything on us then expect us to sort it out - daily. No time for it. From <a href="http://twitter.com/winequester">@winequester</a>.</li>
<li>Putting their content behind paywalls and not exposing it to search engines--and failure to take risks. From <a href="http://twitter.com/jaysbryant">@jaybryant</a>.</li>
<li>Poor reader targeting; trying to be everything to everyone; de-valuing their content by making all of it available for free. From <a href="http://twitter.com/jefflschmitt">@jeffschmitt</a>.</li>
<li>They want to make rules, but they're immigrants to an existing community with existing standards. When in Rome..., etc. From <a href="http://twitter.com/frymaster">@trymaster</a>. </li>
<li>Tweeting every headline they run. If I wanted RSS, I'd use RSS! From <a href="http://twitter.com/lorakolodny">@lorakolodny</a>. </li>
<li>The wholesale sacrifice of narrative in the name of being the first to break news. From <a href="http://twitter.com/JPolicastro">@jpolicastro</a>. </li>
<li>Using Facebook & Twitter but not using social media tools to reach their audiences in new, more effective ways. From <a href="http://twitter.com/CPry">@CPry</a>. </li>
<li>The single biggest mistake: not engaging audience enough. From <a href="http://twitter.com/alexlcohen">@alexlcohen</a>. </li>
<li>Not engaging their readers. Pursuing a monologue rather than a conversation. Which is the exact opposite of what you created at BW.com! From <a href="http://twitter.com/GeriRosman">@GeriRosman</a>.</li>
</ul>John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com79tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-19415766539314120842009-12-03T09:01:00.000-08:002009-12-03T16:38:32.563-08:00Thoughtful Questions: Do You Have Answers?Next week I'm being honored by Media Industry News as one of its Top 21 Social Media Superstars. I'm flattered to receive this award, especially after having been inducted into MIN's Digital Hall of Fame a year ago. But want to make clear it was my BusinessWeek team that really made the difference in using social media to deeply engage our audience on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Ning, and other social media tools. I'm disappointed that I won't be able to pick up this award in person at the Grand Hyatt in New York on Dec. 9th, but BW's online news editor, Dan Beucke, will stand in for me.<br />
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In any case, MIN just asked each of the 21 honorees to address one of three questions when they go up to accept the award. These are fabulous questions so I want to repeat them here and engage in a dialogue with you about them:<br />
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What is the one piece of technology you would bring to a desert island and why?<br />
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What is the biggest mistake media companies make online?<br />
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What is the biggest game-changing technology or service for media companies in the past several years and why?<br />
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The fast answers to these questions might well be the iPhone, the failure to make meaningful changes in culture which almost always trumps strategy, and mobile. But let's be more creative than that. What do you think?John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com55tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2062506512917817626.post-37313069198635381252009-12-02T17:06:00.000-08:002009-12-03T17:11:50.483-08:00Theme Song for a New BusinessMy friends and colleagues know well my deep passion for music. The office I packed up at BusinessWeek a few days ago featured large and dramatic black-and-white prints of Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, and Frank Sinatra. So when I told them the name of my new company, C-Change Media, with the C referring to content, curation, and community, they universally suggested that I should have a theme song and it should be David Bowie's <i>Changes</i>. I couldn't agree more. So I found this terrific version of the tune on YouTube. Have a look and a listen and think C-Change Media when you do.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; white-space: pre;"><object height="285" width="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9tBHOuHolYw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9tBHOuHolYw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="340" height="285"></embed></object></span>John A. Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01192570573329656945noreply@blogger.com319